Retail Intelligence

Thankyou sells personal care products, bottled water, baby care and nappies, but it also sells a compelling narrative of social responsibility. It’s just launched in New Zealand and is set to shake up its competitors in mass-market FMCG.

Thankyou’s range of products launched today in New Zealand, and are available at Foodstuffs’ New World, Pak’n Save and Four Square outlets. So far, only part of its personal care range is launched, but its baby range will follow within a few months.

Thankyou was founded as a bottled water company in 2008 by Daniel and Justine Flynn and Jarryd Burns as teenagers. In Australia, Thankyou has over 50 products available in 5500 outlets. New Zealand is its first new market outside Australia.

The company is owned by the Thankyou Charitable Trust, which distributes 100 percent of the business’s profits to charity partners to fund sustainable development projects to help end global poverty. It has no private shareholders or investors. Its current global partners include World Vision, One Heart World-Wide, Care, Splash, Unicef and Oxfam, and it’s also been linked to faith-based groups like the Salvation Army and Samaritan’s Purse.

It cut ties with Samaritan’s Purse in 2013 after it was revealed the controversial evangelical Christian organisation had been using 78 percent of its budget on religion-oriented activities in developing countries, allocating only 11 percent to aid and disaster recovery. Thankyou had given up to 30 percent of its profits to Samaritan’s Purse since 2010.

Thankyou’s launch in New Zealand was partially funded by sales of its book, Chapter One. The crowdfunded book was sold with a ‘pay-what-you-want’ structure, reporting that two New Zealanders paid $5,000 each for a book. Over a million dollars was raised for the launch within a month.

The company is known for its practice of using social media to directly lobby stockists, mobilising its Facebook followers to post on 7-Eleven Australia’s page to secure its first retailer in 2011. Thankyou repeated the tactic with Coles and Woolworths two years later with an online petition, even getting two fans to buzz Coles’ and Woolworths’ head offices with helicopters.

Thankyou is currently encouraging Kiwi shoppers to “take meaningful action” to boost its sales during its first 13 weeks in New Zealand. It’s gifted newsletter subscribers with a key on a necklace inscribed with the word ‘dream’, which, Daniel Flynn says, is a call to action:

“We’re asking you to dream for Thankyou. This is a little reminder, can you dream big about what you can do to raise awareness over these next 13 weeks and beyond in your school, in your workplace, online and in your platform, whatever influence you have, big or small.”

If we find you doing these things, your comments will be edited without recourse and you may be asked to go away and reconsider your actions.
We respect the right to free speech and anonymous comments. Don’t abuse the privilege.

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